Atlantic season’s first named storm, Arlene, forms

The season’s first named storm, Tropical Storm Arlene, has spun up in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico. It currently has 40-mph sustained winds.

The storm should come ashore along the Mexico coast sometime Thursday, likely south of Tampico, so it shouldn’t have time to strengthen into a hurricane.

The official forecast calls for the storm to reach wind speeds up to 60 mph before landfall. Of course intensity forecasts are challenging to make.

T.S. Arlene in the Bay of Campeche. (U.S. Navy)

Named storms form, on average, about once every two years in the Atlantic during the month of June. Last year, of course, Hurricane Alex formed in June and struck Mexico in a similar location. It’s very rare to get such a powerful hurricane in June.

Forecasters believe that after Arlene comes ashore the tropics should be quiet for a week or two.

I was 13 in 1983 so my memory could certainly be faulty, but I remember going to bed that night watching the Weather Channel on our fancy new Storer Cable and knowing pretty darn well we were gonna get hit.

I remember Alicia very well. We knew it was coming our way the previous night so we did what any early-twenties college student and friends did: we went to hurricane parties!!

Clubs all up and down Westheimer were having drink specials. We spent a good portion of our time at Confetti’s.

I staggered home around 3AM. Winds were blowing at gale strength around that time. I crashed out, only to be woken three hours later by a fallen tree branch hitting the side of the house. Power had gone out at 5AM. We managed to use a camp stove to heat water for instant coffee, but we were completely unprepared for the hurricane.

Alicia was our first actual hurricane, despite us moving here in 1977. As a result we had no supplies. We filled buckets (for washing) and coolers (for drinking) with water. Most of our food was perishable so I drove Mom to the local Randall’s for food. They were the only market with power. Winds were still near hurricane force and it was pouring down with rain. Randall’s was packed. We managed to get a few canned vegetables, a canned meat, and a few cans of fruit cocktail; and I snagged the LAST loaf of bread (Pepperidge Farm) on the shelf one second ahead of some suburban mom who called me a certain name. Mom’s response: “I assure you, his father and I were married when he was conceived!”

With our half sack of groceries we made our way home. Mom was disappointed in the supplies we got, so we tried to figure out where else to go. I remembered Larry Niven’s short story, Inconstant Moon where the protagonist buys food at a liquor store before a catastrophe. Rebel Liquors (Kirkwood and Memorial) was open. We bought peanuts, crackers, paté, a few bottles of Coke, and a case of Michelob.

This, and the contents of the fridge tided us over for the next three days. That’s when the moving trucks came. We were scheduled to move the day Alicia hit but they stayed away. We grilled the meat in the freezer when it thawed that night. We ran out of Coleman kerosine for the camp stove and lantern so Mom used the fireplace gas jets to heat water. No power the entire time. We did okay.

I tell ya, that experience changed me. Now I’m fully stocked up nearly year round. We rotate out food stocks (usually going camping in the late fall and taking the canned goods) but we always keep at least a case of water on hand. We use propane for camping equipment now, and that stuff is still cheap.

Yeah, that 1983 experience is good fodder for jokes. Some of the other stuff my family did that day is usually part of a funny anecdote that involves the phrase, “I could’ve been killed, or worse!”

I say this will all due respect, but how is it “hype” to report that a tropical storm has formed in the Gulf of Mexico? With the unpredictability of the weather it would be irresponsible to NOT report it.

Madcougar, the wording is wrong. There is no “Trouble” for anyone, mexico I am sure WELCOMES this little rainmaker. Besides, even if it was “Trouble”, the headline does not specify mexico, so, it could easily be interpreted to wrongly apply to Houston. Using “Trouble” is consistent with the eternal hype and whining that goes on here.

I have a couple co-workers that have family in Tampico, so for them, seeing this article on the front page was a good thing. Their family didn’t know anything about the storm yet, and thanks to the placement on the front page, they have now been informed.

Chron headline reads: “TROUBLE IN THE TROPICS”. I knew it! I just knew it! After all the whining about the drought, there is now whining about the tropics possibly providing needed rain. Soon, the whining will be about “too much rain”, then later, whining about it being “too cold”. Whiners!

I wouldn’t be surprised if the storm makes it to a minimal Cat 1. It has improved over the last few hours, and is now over a warmer section of water and seems to have slowed down in its forward movement giving it more time to strengthen over the warm water.

Will someone please steer COWBOY and the other mockingbirds to the latest Kim Kardashian butt X-ray updates so they’ll have something to do? My husband is an oil & gas systems engineer; I handle domestic & international insurance accounts. A storm doesn’t have to wipe out Houston to affect a whole lot of people here. If we may have to work this weekend because of a storm, we’d like to be able to plan for it.

I love it…..”12-18 storms”. That’s a 50% cushion on their guess. Science at it’s best and most accurate.!!!!!!….No wonder a cow in Huntsville beat a local Fear Monger on KPRC years ago on forecasting rain…. A COW!

Feel free to self-insure your car, COWBOY – all you or anyone else has to do is post a minimum bond of $75,000 with the state and you’re home free. Of course, you’ll be in a pickle when you hit the Ferrari and send the passengers to the hospital for a week, but you’ll have the satisfaction of not being scammed. Let me guess – you’re the clown who called every 20 minutes after Ike because the Sears shed in the back yard was blown over while I was trying to find a hotel room for my 90-year-old client who had a tree in her living room.

Please…..I wouldn’t be surprised if the insurance company didn’t say the tree was probably already there first. Just like the insurance companies didn’t want to pay for the hurricane surge because they wanted to call it flood water……..Give me a break.

Really, kkkold! How can you suggest such a thing? Permanently evacuate Katy? I would miss all of the Katy jokes. Trolls, on the other hand……

Well, my other state really is burning up despite what the dignitaries said today in the afternoon press conference concerning the Las Conchas fire near Los Alamos. We had a big fire near my home town that burned almost 1000 acres, and a small one in town but it was only 20 acres. There are several others burning right now throughout the state that are huge but have not made the national news. The Donaldson fire is up to 43,000 acres in Lincoln County. It is so named because it started on the ranch owned by Sam Donaldson. It is in the Lincoln National Forest with steep, forested terrain so it will be a real problem. Another fire in that forest is the Little Lewis fire and it has burned 1,200 acres, including homes. They are evacuating several villages (a legal term for a small municipality in New Mexico and not necessarily Native American). Skiers might recognize name of the place they are evacuating people to – Cloudcroft. That is also Billy the Kid country.

There are several other fires too, with evacuations of home and livestock in several places throughout the state. The forestry service and BLM are closing public lands, forest, and parks everywhere. It is so dry that a spark from a chain drug behind a car can start a fire.

The small town about 25 minutes south of here has implemented emergency water restrictions and people just south of town are losing their wells. Needless to say, our yard in New Mexico is just sand which is what surrounds a lot of our town. Sand doesn’t burn, thank goodness. There is however, a lot of dry prairie – that is, what didn’t burn several weeks ago.

When I get back to Texas I’m going to rake the magnolia leaves out of the yard just in case.

Then post a bond with the state for your auto liability. Pay cash for your car and house. Pay for all your medical expenses out of pocket. No policies, no premiums, no exclusions – every possibility will be covered by your bank account. Otherwise, someone else is FINANCING your purchases and will want to protect the investment. Complain about insurance all you want, but be sure to include the situations that require it.